The Virginian

Friday, April 29, 2016

In different parts of the crowd, women had stood up with hand-written posters reading "Women for Trump," "Latinas for Trump," and, to the loudest cheers, "Black Christian Women for Trump." (This is probably because -- excuse my horrifying sexism -- she was very good looking.

Prediction: We're going to be seeing a lot more of such signs in the future as the campaign goes forward. Although the vast majority of the faces filing in Thursday evening were white, the vast majority of them are not racist, unless you believe having national borders makes you a racist.

Simon says it's a Happening for middle America.

and ...

Normal candidates cannot compete with those rare charismatic leaders when they come along. That is why Cruz and Kasich could not compete with Trump, nor could the fourteen or fifteen others once on the stage with him. It is also why I predict he will defeat Hillary Clinton, who has the charisma of a dead turtle.

Don't send your kids to college where they will be sexual playthings for predators!

The Obama administration has produced new statistics on prison rape which, taken in conjunction with its widespread claims about college campuses, imply that women and even men are safer from rape in prison than they are on college campuses.

In a recent report from the White House states that 8.5 percent of female inmates and 3.7 percent of male inmates experience sexual assault while in prison. More than half of these incidents are committed by prison and jail staff, though the report acknowledges that "many abuse incidents in prisons involve other inmates as perpetrators."

If one takes these statistics at face value and compares them to other widely reported statistics used by the White House on campus sexual assault, one could conclude that sexual assault is far more common on college campuses than in America's prisons. After all, the Obama administration loves to tout deeply flawed self-reported surveys showing 20 percent of women and 5 to 8 percent of men are sexually assaulted on college campuses over a four-year college career.

This would mean that men are twice as likely and women nearly three times as likely to be raped on a college campus as they are in prison....

"Try taking that idea to its logical conclusion. Imagine the parents of a young man who has been sentenced to four years in a federal penitentiary: instead of crying, they should breathe a sigh of relief and say, 'At least he wasn't admitted to Harvard.'"

“Some of the most racist things that I’ve ever heard come out of people that are on the air at ESPN. There are some of the biggest racists in sports commentating, and you take it for what it is. You know who they are. You know what they are. I like that they are openly because then you know who they are. You know that they exist.”

Monday, April 25, 2016

April 23 marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. The world will celebrate him as the greatest writer in the history of the English language. But his lasting fame wasn’t inevitable. It almost did not happen.He was born in 1564 and died in 1616 on his 52nd birthday. A celebrated writer and actor who had performed for Queen Elizabeth and King James, he wrote approximately 39 plays and composed five long poems and 154 sonnets. By the time of his death, he had retired and was considered past his prime.By the 1620s, his plays were no longer being performed in theaters. On the day he died, no one — not even Shakespeare himself — believed that his works would last, that he was a genius or that future generations would hail his writings.He hadn’t even published his plays — during his lifetime they were considered ephemeral amusements, not serious literature. Half of them had never been published in any form and the rest had appeared only in unauthorized, pirated versions that corrupted his original language.Enter John Heminges and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare’s friends, fellow actors and shareholders in the King’s Men theatrical company. In his will he left them money to buy gold memorial rings to remember him. By about 1620, they conceived a better way to honor him — one that would make them the two most unsung heroes in the history of English literature. They would do what Shakespeare had never done for himself — publish a complete, definitive collection of his plays.

Few people involved in what is absurdly called the “conservative media” want to shift the Overton Window to the Right or view themselves as activists. Instead, their goal is to carve out a niche, secure the loyalty of a certain market, and then push products to that market. If you are Jim Bakker (back and bigger than ever) or Glenn Beck, it’s buckets of food or packets of “survival seeds” so you can survive the End Times. If you’re some girl on Fox News, you want some subtly suggestive picture of yourself on the cover; what you are actually writing about is beyond the point. If you are Bill O’Reilly, you’re pushing a particular fantasy about “greatness” to aging white men who know the country’s best years are behind it. If you are Mark Levin, you’re offering Talmudic and convoluted knowledge about the Constitution, with Levin acting as a kind of rabbi bestowing ancient secrets on the uneducated goyim.The point is to secure ownership of The Microphone to guarantee access to that market. The business model only works if the Narrative is predictable, the talking points are the same, and the supposed solutions are things people are used to. The recent report Erick Erickson, Mark Levin, and Glenn Beck are being paid to attack Trump isn’t some amazing revelation. It’s just business as usual.For that reason, we may have to rethink some of our assumptions about the way the conservative movement or even the Republican Party operates. It’s tempting to say the point of the movement or the party is just to carry out the wishes of its donors. Yes, these donors want cheap labor via mass immigration, support for Israel, and a pro-corporate stance in regulatory policy. But consider the donors who blew untold millions on the campaigns of people like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio. Are they Masters of the Universe – or simply suckers?If 2016 has shown us anything, it’s the absurdity of pretending there’s a difference between the “Republican Establishment” and some virtuous TruConservative Movement. Ted Cruz’s campaign represents the unification of these supposedly disparate forces if indeed there ever was a difference. And the key to understanding both the GOP and the Beltway Right is recognizing both are fundamentally self-interested. Talking to either about “principles” is like talking to a cafeteria Catholic about the intricacies of ecclesial law or some centuries-old papal bull. It’s completely irrelevant to their own worldview. When a TruConservative starts talking to you about “principles,” you’re simply hearing a sales pitch.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Media Silent on the Clinton Mortgage Banking Scam.

Saturday, April 16, 2016

Political parties are private organizations. Who knew?

This is the first election in my memory when it became clear
that political parties, the organizations that nominate our political leaders
and produce our congressmen, senators and presidents are private clubs. And while you may call yourself a member and
even pay dues, the leadership and direction belongs to the inner circle
who can do just about anything they want even if the nominal members
disagree. Because that’s what private
clubs do.

And while some branches of this club are quasi-democratic,
allowing people who are not dues paying members to have a say, others are not,
as the Colorado Republican party recently demonstrated.

That comes as a rude awakening to many people who thought
that the parties were more democratic than that.

Of course this has always been the case. Political parties started out as
unincorporated groups of people who had political or ideological goals. And for several hundred years the power of
government over our lives, the amount we paid in taxes and the rules they
imposed on us left us mostly free except in wartime. So the people who ran the government left us
mostly alone. But now government
dominates our lives, for many people taxes now take more of our
income than food, shelter and clothing.

Government designs our toilet bowls, our light bulbs, the
amount of salt we’re allowed to eat, the kind of insurance we can buy, who we
can expect to see walking into our bathrooms, the design of our cars and the
size of our electric bill. It tells us
if we can drain our swamp and forces us to take our shoes off before we board
the next plane. It reads our mail and
demands that we believe that we’re responsible for the earth’s climate or go to
prison. NASA which once launched rockets
to the moon now cruises Facebook to denounce the global warming
unbelievers.

Government schools teach our kids that the Founders were
not brave fighters for independence but racist slave-driver patriarchs who
forced their women to toil in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. The government teaches our kids that men andwomen are not really men or women since gender is a matter of self
identification. These institutions no
longer produce scholars but little Maoists ever ready to use violence to asset
their will. And if you dare chalk your
dissent on the sidewalk they will hunt you down and punish you.

So now the people who run the government have gradually
become much more important. And it follows
that allowing private clubs to make up the rules about who gets to run for
office has become outdated. We are now realizing
that the gate-keepers in the private political parties are as big a danger to a
free people as the ayatollahs in Tehran who decide who can run for office
there.

It's now clear that the leaders of the club find that belonging to the leadership is more importation than the purposes for which the club was originally founded. The club's a big business and pays really well. Which means that people with money who want to influence government policy for their own ends can now determine who ends up in the electoral pipeline.

No matter what the Democrats do with their club, Republicans should resolve to correct this problem. Electing someone who opposes the current system is a good start.

The State of Trump's Soul

A great many people in the Conservative commentariat are couching their criticism of Trump in religious terms. Since the primary Republican candidate standing between Trump and the Republican nomination is Ted Cruz, a man whose campaign began at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, the partisan divide is understandable.

It's a shame.

I never knew that we had so many people concerned about the
state of a candidate’s soul as a condition of leadership. While I’m a Christian I’m fully prepared to
vote for someone who is not if I consider that person right for the job or at
least better than the alternatives.

This entire discussion about Trump’s Christianity reminds me
of the last election where Romney was asked about abortion. The question came out of the blue for the
sole purpose of bringing up the old claim that republicans were waging a war on
women.

And, of course, there was an
underlying current of bigotry against Mormons which may have kept some
evangelical Christians home on Election Day.

So the question of the day seems to be whether Trump is a
good Christian. I’m not aware that Trump
ever brought up his faith except as the answer to a question. Is he a great Christian? No, not unless there's something about him we don't know. Great
Christians don’t go to church only at Christmas and Easter. He doesn’t teach Sunday School. And he exaggerates. Some say he lies. Fine. He’s
been married three times and has had had sexual relations with women not his
wife. But if we’re going to invoke Jesus
let’s remember what He said about the woman caught in adultery “Let him who is
without sin cast the first stone.”

Is he a good person? Compared
to whom? Saint Timothy called himself the
chief of sinners so I’m shocked, shocked to find so many upright people with
the authority to denounce Trump for his manifold sins. Closer to home, we find that all his wives,
present and past still like him. His
children honor and support him, which – let us remember – was not true of
Saint Reagan. Others have vouched for
his charity to people in need. And he
has provided jobs for tens of thousands of people who work for him.

So hate him, denounce him, swear to vote against him, but
don’t use the shopworn excuse that it’s his lack of Christian virtues that
makes you do that. It makes you a hypocrite.

Great read by Heather McDonald discussing feminism and the wave of Islamic youth invading Europe.

Feminists incessantly harp about a phantom “rape culture” in the United States and other Western countries. On New Year’s Eve 2016, Northern European cities experienced an outbreak of the real thing—and the opponents of patriarchy went silent. It turns out that a more powerful force exists on the left than feminist victimology: multiculturalism.

As revelers gathered in the central square of Cologne, Germany, for the traditional New Year’s Silvesternacht celebrations, thousands of North African and Middle Eastern males started throwing firecrackers into the crowd and attacking passersby. They pickpocketed and robbed males and females, but they directed most of their violence against women: grabbing their breasts and buttocks, inserting their fingers into the women’s vaginas, and, in a few instances, raping them, while shouting sexual insults. A total of 653 victims filed reports with the police.

Friday, April 15, 2016

It’s getting so you need a scorecard to keep up with the correct gender nomenclature of progressivism these days. Like this official “Working Glossary of Terms” that the University of Washington uses for students to figure out how to identify themselves. If you click through the link and scroll down the terms, you’ll see that “Male” and “Female” are not options. Instead, you’re supposed to choose “Cisgender,” meaning “describes someone who feels comfortable with the gender identity and gender expression expectations assigned to them based on their physical sex.” Notice the telltale word about how your gender identity is “assigned” to you. (Question: why is pregnancy “assigned” exclusively to the female of the species? Seems rather arbitrary and obviously discriminatory to me.)

It appears that some admitted students to the U of W didn’t go by the official glossary, and wrote down the offensive, microaggressive terms “Male” or “Female” in answer to the Gender question on the University’s Facebook page. Which prompted the following email from Paula Shields in the Admissions office:

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Bib government Ryan: "Don't call Puerto Rico bill a 'bailout'"

When is a bailout not a bailout? Let Paul Ryan, who's trying to pass a bailout bill for Puerto Rico explain:

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) blasted Wall Street investors on Wednesday as he tried to tamp down conservative discontent with a bill to assist Puerto Rico.The GOP leader charged that “special money interest groups on Wall Street” are trying to sabotage the legislation by billing it as a “bailout.” ...

But at a hearing Wednesday on the bill, several conservative lawmakers argued the GOP-crafted legislation is effectively a bailout for an island struggling with an ailing economy that is billions of dollars in debt.

Several Republicans expressed concern with allowing the island to renegotiate its debts, and insisted taxpayers would eventually have to foot the bill for Puerto Rican relief.

Meanwhile, Democrats have expressed openness to the bill, but have said they cannot back it without some changes, most notably to the powers of an outside fiscal control board.

So the only difference between the Republicans who want to bail out Puerto Rico and Democrats who want to bail out Puerto Rico is that the Democrats don't want any oversight on the bailout money.

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Trump is a dangerously effective classic demagogue not because the working white poor are empty-vessel racists, but rather because he has split white America along class lines and has, among the Republicans, who are already the minority party, opened a self-destructive Pandora’s box of white resentments toward wealthy whites who use their education, family ties, networks, income, and money to leverage privilege while caricaturing or deprecating poor and middle-class whites. Poorer whites can live with the perceived injury of the well-connected and well-educated white elite capitalizing on the age of globalization, of huge and bankrupt government, and of politically correct multiculturalism, but not with the perceived insults that are central to the elite career and psyche. In an age of La Raza (“The Race”) and (only) Black Lives Matter, how exactly did the Republican establishment think the white working classes would eventually react to the new hyphenated America? With a week’s escape to Provincetown or commiseration at a B-list D.C. party? Tribalism for thee, but not for me?

"White privilege” is now a catchword for advantages supposedly enjoyed by roughly 70 percent of the population. Forget for a moment the inexactness of the term “white” in an increasingly interracial and intermarried society in which millions are of mixed ancestry and cannot be pegged by superficial appearance as fitting into any one racial category. Forget as well the careerism of the diversity industry, emblemized by the embarrassing but profitable ruses of an Elizabeth Warren, Rachel Dolezal, or Ward Churchill (none of whom faked a pedigree of a sympathetic poor Hungarian or Bosnian refugee). And forget the lies — such as “Hands up, don’t shoot” or George Zimmerman as the “white Hispanic” — necessary to paper over the contradictions of racial tribalism. Concentrate instead on the growing industry of caricaturing whites in popular culture.

There are two characteristics common to popular uses of the term “white”: It is almost always used pejoratively, and it is mostly voiced by elites of all backgrounds — and usually as a slur against the white working and “clinger” classes. So “the Latino vote” reflects shared aspirations; “the white vote” merely crude resentment. Those who benefit from affirmative action are not privileged, but those who do not certainly are. Whites cling in Neanderthal fashion to their legal rifles; inner-city youth hardly at all to their illegal handguns. Buying a jet-ski on credit is typical redneck stupidity; borrowing $200,000 to send a kid to a tony private university from which he will graduate more ignorant and arrogant than when he enrolled is wise. White “evangelicals” are puzzling for their crude hypocrisies; not so the refined paradoxes of Congregationalists and Episcopalians. Smoking is self-destruction, while injecting a strain of botulism toxin into your face is not self-mutilation.

Nothing is more surreal than to hear a multimillionaire African-American athlete (in a professional sports league that suffers from lack of diversity and is exempt from the government notion of disparate impact) or a Malibu-based movie star rail against white privilege — as if most of Appalachia or Oildale lived in the manner of one’s white neighbors in Santa Monica or the Hollywood Hills. About the time when billionaire Oprah Winfrey sought further victim status by inventing a racial slight at the hands of a Swiss boutique that refused to show her a $38,000 handbag, I thought of a white, gap-toothed, out-of-work painter with a bad back and bad habits in the southern San Joaquin Valley, who periodically wants me to hire him again to paint the barn. Oprah is the supposed victim of a rude European white person, and thus by extension we have to end the unfair racial privileges enjoyed by barn painters?

The latest campus lunacies — from Black Lives Matter to the Trotskyization of the names of dead white male benefactors — are predicated on quite privileged white kids attacking the idea of whiteness to win exemption for their own quite comfortable status. Stanford students would be far more believable as racial egalitarians if, instead of rallying against the reintroduction of Western Civilization in their curriculum, they had they used their energy to drive their Beamers over to East Palo Alto and volunteer to tutor in the all-but-segregated public schools. Better yet, their professors could curb the diversity enthusiasm in the Academic Senate and instead put their own children in a good San José public school. Integration and assimilation are proven remedies for minority disparity.

Most of the spineless university presidents and deans are affluent and privileged white men and women, committed to affirmative action and diversity, but always at the expense of someone other than their own class. Could not a college president at least write the following memo: “As proof of my commitment to diversity and campus egalitarianism, I promise to end all special consideration for the children of alumni and wealthy donors. I further pledge that I will accept no off-the-record phone calls from parents lobbying for their children’s admittance outside of accepted admission channels. In an increasingly diverse society, it simply will not do to circumvent transparent channels of evaluation. And as an added incentive to encourage fairness and to promote the public schools, our university will soon announce a one-year hiatus on prep-school applications.” Such a proclamation would do more to promote university equality than all the self-serving, pompous diversity memos of the ruling elite.

In sum, the white lower and middle classes are angry, and they are tired of being blamed for the unhappiness of other tribes. In our world, in which uncouth tribal leaders can say almost anything, these whites wanted their own Sharpton or Ramos, and finally got him with Donald J. Trump. As is true of most revolutionary movements, the aggrieved are not as angry at their perceived opponents as they are contemptuous at the enablers of them. Given his cruelty, obnoxiousness, and buffoonery, Trump should have been a three-month flash in the pan, exactly as most of his critics had prophesied and dreamed. I hope he will still fade, as he should. But the fact that he has persisted this long may be because the hatred our elites so passionately claimed was aimed at the Other was actually directed at themselves.

This falls into the "I thought this was a headline from The Onion" category.

The IRS is struggling to ensure that illegal immigrants are able to illegally use Social Security numbers for legitimate purposes, the agency's head told senators on Tuesday, without allowing the numbers to be used for "bad" reasons.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen made the statement in response to a question from Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., during a session of the Senate Finance Committee about why the IRS appears to be collaborating with taxpayers who file tax returns using fraudulent information. Coats said that his staff had discovered the practice after looking into agency procedures.

"What we learned is that ... the IRS continues to process tax returns with false W-2 information and issue refunds as if they were routine tax returns, and say that's not really our job," Coats said. "We also learned the IRS ignores notifications from the Social Security Administration that a name does not match a Social Security number, and you use your own system to determine whether a number is valid."

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Those darned rules

Bud Norman is a great writer from Kansas with whom I have a love-hate relationship because he's right about so many things and wrong about others.

He recently wrote an essay about The Donald "pouting" about the rules that gave all of Colorado's delegates to Ted Cruz. To read the while thing go here.

But there is another side to this story that gives some weigh to Trump's pout,which I represented here:

Bud reminds us all that people who work for newspapers as “reporters” and “editors” don’t know Jack about the stuff they write about. Didn’t you, dear reader, go into this nominating process believing that caucuses and primaries in which you, dear readers, would decide who the party’s candidate would be would decide the candidate? Well, like Donald Trump, you were fooled by these incredibly smart members of the press who tell you what’s important, what to think and how to think about it because they don’t know Jack.

But you’ll forget about the fact that the People-of-the-Press don’t know Jack about pretty much anything until they start writing about something that you do know Jack about. At which point you’ll realize you’re dealing with particularly stupid dummies; but you’ll forget about it when you switch to the next fable on the page when those who don’t know Jack spout off about stuff they don’t know Jack about.

Which leads me to the issue of “pouting;” a word which seems to come in for its share of use because it’s the schoolyard taunt of people who are winning because the game is rigged and when the losers complain they are taunted for complaining. The schoolyard taunt works everywhere it seems except the schoolyard where pouting gets the principal and the teachers to give you everything you want. Like in the case of Emory, University of Missouri, Yale, Harvard, University of Tennessee, University of California, … oh hell the list is too long … let’s just make it “Academia.” There people pout about imaginary slights, grievances, cultural appropriation, Halloween costumes, chalk on the sidewalk, a priest identified as a KKK member, imaginary gang rapes and – by golly – they get what they want and the staff and faculty cheer them on.

So, you see, pouting works because people who believe that the game’s been rigged because they believe what the press – that doesn’t know Jack – has lied to them about the rules of the game are going to be upset that the lies that the press that doesn’t know Jack has told them. Because there is one thing that the Country Class on all sides of the political divide believe in: fairness. And when they see that the rules promulgated by the Ruling Class to keep them in power rig the game so that the peaceful voice the people have via elections is replaced by rules designed to shut them up, they are apt to realize that the peaceful way of getting rid of the current Ruling Class may have to be changed. That’s the point where the Ruling Class had better hope that the people with guns and badges are on their side or they may find that lampposts have other uses.

Sunday, April 10, 2016

The possibility that I am wrong is always out there, lurking in space like a troll waiting to pounce on a misspelling, or worse, a factual error. So how does one know if the meteor of being wrong on an epic scale is about to crash in on one's house?The place to begin is with what I like about him.1. Trump is a successful businessman worth $10 billion. He took his family's business from the Queens to Manhattan and the world. The Trump Organization is a worldwide real estate and resort business with 34,000 employees. Not bad for a man who began with a $40 million stake in 1974.But what about the rumor that he could have done better if he invested in an S and P stock index fund in 1974? This disturbed me so I checked it out. I found this a hoax created by Mother Jones and repeated by Never Trump writers who apparently never question anything written about Trump that confirms their opinion that he is a buffoon. To make to work you have to understate his net worth by 71 percent and have him live on pork and beans for 40 years rather than a lavish penthouse apartment with a jet, a helicopter, and two ex-wives to support."Of all the criticisms you could lob at Trump, this is a weirdly weak one. Basically, the man took a $40 million kernel and, while spending lavishly enough to surround himself with all the gold-plated bathroom fixtures his heart desired, managed to do a 26 percent better job growing his fortune than if he had quietly left it to grow in stocks without selling a single share or spending a single dividend check for 41 years. I'd say that's pretty good. How many actual money managers could brag they'd done the same with their clients' cash?" Jordan Weissmann, Slate’s senior business and economics correspondent, wrote.Oh, and the first stock index fund began in 1975, a year after Trump was supposed to make this imaginary investment in 1974. This would have made the $40 million worth $2.9 billion. His net worth is $10 billion.But what about the bankruptcies? Four times he went to bankruptcy court for protection from creditors to avoid bankruptcy.

Want to buy a demonstration of have someone fake outrage? It's easy.

Ever wonder where those demonstrators come from? They could very well be unemployed actors earning $10 an hour. There's a company called Crowds on Demand that puts it all together for you.

The text says to arrive at an address on California Street in San Francisco’s Nob Hill neighborhood at 5 p.m. on a Thursday. Like my previous Crowds on Demand gig, I have no idea what my work is going to entail. All I’m told is to wear a suit.Again, I’m running late. As I crest the hill at California and Taylor, I see elegantly dressed older couples streaming into a palatial white building. Photographers and TV news cameramen swarm around each pair, while a reporter blocks their path, bombarding them with questions. Getting closer, I realize that this isn’t a TV reporter — it’s Adam wielding a reporter’s hand-held mic.“What’s your opinion on the Georgia edict?” he shouts at a couple in their 70s who veer around him, making a beeline for the front door.“No comment,” the guy says. “We’re from Greece.”“No comment?” Adam shrieks, as they duck into the building. “What are you saying? Greek people can’t stand up against bigotry?”He spots me and comes over to say hi, making note of my lateness. Breathlessly, he gives me a hurried orientation. This is the California Memorial Masonic Temple, where Masons have gathered for their annual world conference. Recently, the Georgia grand lodge passed a bylaw — known as the Georgia edict — prohibiting homosexuality among its members. Our job? To pose as a TV news crew, confront Masons as they arrive for the opening gala, and challenge them to take a stand. “Just watch me for a few minutes,” Adam says. “You’ll figure it out.”Sprawling camera crew in tow, Adam intercepts the Masons and interrogates them as they struggle to rush past him. Most ignore his questions, but now and then a couple stops to talk. “It’s a state’s rights issue,” a courtly, silver-haired man from Florida tells him. “Do I agree with what they’re doing in Georgia? No way. But one of the main things about Masons is, we don’t interfere with other chapters.”Adam inches closer to the guy, raising his voice. “If you don’t agree with it, isn’t it your duty to stand up and say so?”The guy shrugs. “I’m not a lodge master.”Adam goes berserk or, as I observe him more closely, puts on a controlled show of going berserk. “What an embarrassment!” he shouts. “Listen, I go to the Equinox gym in Santa Monica. If the Equinox in Boston bans gays, I’m damn sure going to do something about it!”Two cops barrel over, a burly male and a spike-haired female. The male cop says, “Hey! You guys can do whatever it is you’re doing. That’s your right. But knock off the swearing! There are kids around.”Adam wasn’t really swearing, and there are no kids in sight. Left momentarily speechless, Adam allows the Florida Mason to hurry up the temple’s front steps.Adam turns to me. “All right,” he says. “You got the idea?”Actually, I don’t, but Adam deputizes me on the spot, passing me a mic. He assigns a ragtag band to shadow me — six altogether, ranging from 20 to 60 years old. We’ve got two photographers, two videographers, a soundperson with a mic on an extendable boom pole, and a young woman balancing the brightest floodlight I’ve ever seen in my life on a rickety monopod. We don’t look like any kind of TV news crew that I’ve ever seen — more like students in a community college filmmaking class — but for Masons visiting San Francisco from Arkansas, Oregon, Portugal, and Uganda, unfamiliar with the local media, maybe we’ll pass.What brought my fake camera crew here tonight was a Craigslist ad Adam posted earlier in the week: “Adventurous videographers wanted,” with few other details. Emily Ivker is the person wielding the boom pole. She’s a recent college graduate from Wayland, Massachusetts, who just landed in San Francisco the previous week with dreams of becoming a travel blogger. “Twenty bucks an hour,” she says. “I couldn’t pass it up.” (Crowds on Demand wages vary depending on the type of job and the local cost of living: $10 an hour in New Orleans, double in the Bay Area.)

It's clled Astroturfing and you can bet your bottom dollar that a lot of what you see on the street, in rallies and on social media is paid for by some deep pockets.

Thursday, April 07, 2016

A little history of the Klan

Some students at Indiana University saw a Dominican Priest and took him to be Klansman, sparking a campus-wide panic. Students were advised to stay in their rooms lest they be ... what?

There are several interesting things about this including the fact that even those students who felt foolish to have been "misinformed" still feel that the presence of s single member of the KKK was a life-threatening event which should have been followed by sheltering in place as if there was an active shooter on campus.

As a service to college students everywhere, here is an essay by Jonathan Swift, Jr. on the Klan.

The descent of American liberal arts programs into insignificance is simply pathetic. I have visited many campuses on my long driving trips throughout the states.

I have found that the vast majority of American college students are geographically illiterate and historically illiterate, unable to locate major countries on a map or even to place major historical events even in the correct century. This makes them unable to see current events with any perspective at all, to even be able to gauge relative threats or understand the degree of prosperity and the advantages that almost every American enjoys, blessings that were simply unknown throughout the long course of human history.

Instead, these mincing little people have been raised by helicopter parents like some sort of human veal, so we have the specter of $40,000 a year college students, who enjoy resort style living and climbing walls, who compete in a perpetual Olympics of Victimhood, often comparing themselves to slaves no less. The fact that any American college student can compare themselves to human chattel, often beaten, treated like and animal and deprived of their liberty, show you the lack of intelligence on the modern campus, let alone perspective.

Anyone who mistakes a priest in cassock for a hooded member of the Klu Klux Klan is of course a fool. A fool that is so marinaded in the Church of Perpetual Victimhood, that they see pervasive racism and disabling bigotry everywhere. Of course, a well adjusted person would realize that the miracle of America is not how poorly people get along in the most integrated and ethnically diverse nation the world has ever known, but how well they do! How many people who were at each other's throats in the "old country" meet and marry, how there are millions and millions of mixed race people. Of course an intelligent person would understand that if America was horrible, no one would be clamoring to go there, but that of course would require some working synapses, which are in short supply on the leftist dominated campus.

Regarding the noxious Klan, perhaps some actual history is in order, for the real Klan once had its evil tentacles into even Indiana.

The Klan was of course founded as an adjunct to the Democratic Party after the Civil War to combat Reconstruction and to discourage black Republicans from being elected. It was started by a number of former Confederate officers including apparently Gen. Nathan "That Devid" Forrest. While the South was still occupied by the Union Army, the United States, there were a number of courageous blacks who were elected to office in spite of intimidation and terrorism by the Klan.

The Klan gradually faded into the rearview mirror until the Progressive Era, when the second incarnation of the Klan was started. It was of course glorified by the landmark film "Birth of a Nation," in 1915, which was even shown in Wilson'a White House. The racist President Woodrow Wilson (D), worked to segregate the federal government. The second was a massive enterprise, a fraternal as well as terrorist organization, which had chapters across the Democrat's solid south and well as in the north and west. It peaked in the 1920s, when it was able to march on Washington and boasted at least 3,000,000 members, who were racist, anti-Catholic as well as anti-Semitic. The second Klan feel apart quickly during the Great Depression.

One of the most stellar Klu Klux Klan Democrats was David Curtis Stephenson, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in his adopted state of Indiana. Along with may of the other local Democrats, who whored around, drank and when he was convicted of abducting and raping a young white woman who died from his bites, it embarrassed the Klan, leading to its rapid decline. His trial and the corruption and payoffs it exposed even reached into the Indiana GOP.

The third Klan was revived in the 1950s and 1960s in response to the rise of black Americans and efforts to integrate the south. At that time the South was of course solidly Democratic and well known Democrats like George Wallace (D), Governor of Alabama, Orval Faubus (D), Governor of Arkansas, Lester Maddox (D), Governor of Georgia, later Lieutenant Governor under Jimmy Carter (D), all fought integration and Civil Rights for blacks. Another legendary Klan member was Senator Robert C. Byrd (D), West Virginia. Senator Byrd was one of the greatest Democratic politicians of all time and the longest serving Senator, who was in office more than fifty years. One can see this legendary Democrat's name on public buildings across West Virginia and this wonderful Democrat was also a great leader in the Klu Klux Klan, an Exalted Cyclops no less. He was very open about his racist views:

shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side ... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.

— Robert C. Byrd, in a letter to Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-MS), 1944

The third incarnation of the Klan fortunately faded as integration was forced upon the South. Today, it is down to about 3,000 - 6,000 pathetic individuals, out of a population of about 315,000,000. There is very little Klan activity today and none that I am aware of on a college campus.

So campus cupcakes, please worry about taking a meaningful class or two between shouting down speakers you don't want to hear or running and hidings from Trump chalkers and chalkenings. Don't worry your empty little heads about the Klan, they are not a meaningful presence on the campus of today, your own professors, many of whom have a contempt for the First Amendment, are the totalitarians on campus and of course there are a number or convicted leftist terrorists who are now university professors no less.

How stupid can you be?

Out here in the real world, do you college students have any idea of how IDIOTIC you all appear to be? I mean this is not a mere matter of making a mistake. This is a sign of a very serious mental disorder run rampant on campuses. Even among those who appear to recognize that a mistake was made here, there is a calm acceptance of the idea that reacting to a KKK outfit actually required a campus wide meltdown. Even one of you who sees it was a mistake calls the reaction "reasonable." Absurd. This is a sign you are all losing a basic sense of reality. For heavens sake STOP already. The rest of the nation is doubled over in laughter at you - but in fact ought to be frightened as to what you all portend for the rest of us.

Tuesday, April 05, 2016

The Buckleyites still run the Reagan Mystery Cult and the adjoining gift shoppe, the latter being the critical piece. Jonah Goldberg lives in a million dollar home in the Washington suburbs. To maintain that lifestyle means keeping the gift shoppe open. Even if he wanted to entertain alternative opinions, he has a mortgage to pay and a college fund to finance. He lacks the talent of a Mark Steyn and the courage of Ann Coulter so he cannot go it alone. He has to remain a clerk in the gift shoppe, writing copy about the wonderfulness of Buckley Conservatism.

The problem for Buckley Conservatives is they have nothing to offer. People see 25 years of failure and naturally begin to look elsewhere for answers. The alt-right has loads of problems and parts of it are a bit like heroin, offering momentary relief at the expense of long term happiness. To the person suffering in the present, however, the momentary high from joining a white identity group, for example, feels like salvation.

The alt-right, in all of its manifestations, is not growing in number and confidence because they made a pact with the devil. There is nothing supernatural at work here. It’s not a coherent intellectual movement, but simply a refuge from the endless assault on ordinary people, who see their traditions, their customs, their ancestors and their progeny being ground up in the meat grinder of technocratic managerialism. The alt-right is not offering anything but shelter from the storm – for now.

Mass movements are always attractive to the disaffected, which is why responsible people must always work to limit the number of disaffected. It’s this failure of Buckley Conservatism, and the failure of the managerial class as a whole, that has grown the number of disaffected. The whole reason to be loyal to the Left or the Right was always patriotic interest. Neither side bothers to make patriotic arguments, thus leaving patriots with nothing.

When people who have been loyal to conservative causes and conservative politicians their whole life find themselves being called racists and bigots by those people they supported, they start to feel like they have been conned. When ruling class organs publicly argue that vast parts of the culture must be destroyed, that traditional America must be wiped out, people hear a declaration of war. The response is not going to be “yes sir, may I have another.” The response, to quote the late Andrew Breitbart, is going to be “Fuck you. War!”

Kim Philby, British double agent, reveals all in secret video

A previously unseen video of one of Britain's most infamous spies describing his career as a Soviet agent has been uncovered by the BBC.

The tape is of Kim Philby giving a secret lecture to the Stasi, the East German Intelligence Service, in 1981.
It is the first time the ex-MI6 officer can be seen talking about his life as a spy from his recruitment to his escape.
He describes his career rising up the ranks of MI6 whilst providing its secrets to the Soviet Union's KGB.
He ends with advice to the East German spies.

"Dear Comrades."
With those two words spoken in an impeccable upper-class English accent, one of Britain's most famous spies and its greatest traitor begins a masterclass in betrayal to a select audience of East German spies.

Philby's hour-long address was preserved on video tape and never seen in public until now.

The BBC unearthed it in the official archives of the Stasi in Berlin.

It was never made for public consumption (and the grainy video and poorly synchronised sound shows the limits of technology at the time), but that means the former MI6 officer is open about his career in a way never heard before.
'Enemy camp'

After an introduction from East German spymaster Markus Wolf, who was so elusive to western spy agencies that he was known for many years as "the man without a face", Philby makes his way to the lectern to a hero's welcome.
"I must warn you that I am no public speaker," Philby says.

"I've spent most of my life trying to avoid publicity of any kind."

That much is true. Previously the best known video of Philby was him giving a 1955 press conference in his mother's London flat.
On that occasion he said very little, only denying he was a communist.

Monday, April 04, 2016

Gerard Vanderleun: Bad Thoughts

Yes, it is true. I have "bad" thoughts. Bad thoughts of all kinds and in all colors and at all levels. Bad thoughts that are, in their naked essence, very much like your "bad" thoughts.

...

My "bad" thought came about on Saturday when, with a friend, I took a walk down the streets of Seattle in what is called, with no sense of irony, "The University District."

There is, indeed, a University in the Seattle University District, even if big business is bugging out of there, and a lot of other areas in Seattle, as fast as they can. The University District is pretty much like all the other college and university districts in medium to large American cities today. It provides a living to a small faction of genuine scholars, as well as work space and research facilities and salaries to a host of useful scientists and necessary engineers. But more and more, the main function of our University Districts from coast to coast is to provide a safe-haven for the homeless, the useless, the addicted, the soul-dead, and the politically perverted of all stripes. In addition, the university at the center of these districts currently provides employment for, and benefits to, a host of latter-day hippy professors whose twisted politics, depraved morals and incessant dreams of the destruction of America would make them each persona non grata in most American communities outside of "university districts."

Saturday was an especially good day for seeing the University District as it really is. It was Street-Fair Saturday and, as I remarked to my friend after strolling a couple of blocks, the streets had been transformed into what can only be described as an open-air Moonbat Mall.

Here in the bright light of a perfect day causes of all sorts and flavors jousted for your attention with the scents of a dozen different countries' street food and offers to rub your skull with copper wires. They were still selling and buying tie-dyes that Jerry Garcia wouldn't be caught dead in. You could get sculptures made of polished bones, or you could get sharpened bones driven through your nose while you wait. Parents abused small children openly by paying insane clowns to paint what could be flowers on the faces of the kids. At one point, three generations of goth womanhood walked down the street under parasols; daughter goth, mother goth, and an older woman in deep goth wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed her to be "Fairy Goth Mother." (I had a very brief "bad" thought on reading that, but stuffed it back in the Bad Thought Bag.)

The crowds swirled about us in all the flaky ancient types we've all come to know since, well, 1968. Nothing new about them and, even when confronted with someone with a spider web tattooed on his face, holes the size of silver dollars thought his ears, a couple of dozen piercing in his face and limbs, nothing particularly shocking. All rather common to tell you the truth; just blandly ordinary for the University District. I had a brief moment of shame when I realized that back in the 60s and 70s I had played a small role in inventing all these types, but it passed upon the purchase of a corn dog.

What didn't pass what the deep sense of ennui and inertia that comes over one when you are exposed, for the Nth time, to all the causes and manias that have festered without change in our University Districts for decades. The only real change is that where these causes once seemed to lean forward into the future, they now seem to sink steadily into the past. They're like a variation on the old joke about what you get when you play country music backwards; only in this case you don't get your job back, your wife back, and your dog back. The promise here in these cherished liberal/left/green causes is that if you just believe in them as you once believed in fairies you'll get your high taxes back, your September 10th vulnerability back, and your recumbent bicycle back.

Where do these insane yet indestructible ideas come from? How do they replicate themselves over and over, and still find new brains in which to gain traction like some Birdbrain-Flu virus that cannot be eradicated by either fact or experience? The answer is that they are kept alive and communicable in the Petri dishes of our universities and colleges, and implanted deeply in each new freshman class.

This is obvious to anyone who has been paying attention to the degeneration of the "liberal arts" in higher education into the "liberal hegemony" of higher education. But still, seeing the Moonbat Mall red in tooth and claw, I had to wonder why we allow this all to go on.

It was then I had my "bad" thought which, to make myself pure again, I must confess here to all the world. It is this:

"The reason we continue to maintain and fund our institutions of 'Higher Education' in America today is grounded in sensible and prudent American traditions of social control and economics.

"Having passed through and enacted all the liberal ideas of the last few decades when it came to handling the insane and unhinged among us, we have foolishly allowed a population of delusional schizophrenics to expand into our streets and cities and towns until we are up to our hips in Moonbats. Tragically, the Moonbat population among us is now so large that -- even if we wanted to -- it is no longer possible to build enough institutions to house them all. We simply can't afford that many new loony-bins.

"While this would be a crisis in a less innovative society, we have solved this problem in a very American way. We have decided to let the bizarre among us simply be institutionalized in place in the single network of American institutions capable of sustaining them, the University District. We have even employed the worst offenders and most deeply disturbed among them in the Universities themselves.

"Think about it. Would you like to have a Noam Chomsky or a Ward (How) Churchill showing up and wandering about in your neighborhood, hanging out with your children, lurking in back of the 7-11 with a Little Red Book, a case of Colt '45 Double Malt, and a bag of Slim-Jims? I think not.

"No. You live in a nice town and you value the rising equity in your home, as well your children's intellectual, not to say moral, safety. The very thought of a Chomsky or a Churchill scampering about the neighborhood clad only in ideological Speedos would cause any normal person's' teeth to burst into flame. Mine are feeling a bit sparkish just writing about it.

"No, it is better to have these sorts of people and their "support" groups safely sequestered in the University Districts of America. Think of these not as 'hallowed halls of ivy,' but as Red Light Districts for the Intellectually Pornographic. At the very least, the existence of the University District allows us to know where most of our Moonbats are, even at night. Especially at night.

"But the real upside of maintaining and sustaining the University Districts of America is, alas, the baddest part of my "bad" thought.

For if there ever comes a time when we will have to get our Moonbat population under tighter control, well, we will 'know where they live.' Indeed, it is my understanding that the administrations of all our Universities keep detailed records of names and addresses. And the NSA doesn't even have to ask."

Any worthwhile political movement or campaign needs a compelling mission or animating purpose of some kind, and it has to go beyond getting elected. The mission does not have to explain the minutiae of ideology or policy implementation, rather it must encapsulate them. No matter how vague or platitude-laden this mission statement is, it has to resonate with people and it has to be a future-state. “I like how things were yesterday” has rarely been good enough in the battle of ideas.

For liberals in the United States, a mission statement is easily produced and promulgated. Formally, it is to promote equality and inclusion among Americans of all backgrounds. In practice, it is building a coalition of ethnic minorities and leftist Whites to outvote a former conservative White majority, but that is beside the point. Today, some debate exists over the implementation of the liberal mission in the United States, but not the principles of the mission itself. It is a debate over means, namely whether the vehicle of liberalism will be a corporate-supported, bureaucratic enforcement of social liberalism and ‘anti-racism’ via federal institutions, or a European-style social democracy promoting those same policies via left-wing populism, with which they can run through the minoritization of Anglo-Americans and the dispensing of more gibsmedats.

On the other hand, mainline conservatives have a much harder time articulating their mission. In general, the formal mission probably sounds like to support freedom and limited government. In practice, we see something much more confused and convoluted, and which relies on reaction rather than ambition. Freedom means anything and therefore nothing; seldom can tangible results on freedom be delivered by conservatives, with firearms ownership being the most notable exception. Limited government is a relative term and is just taken to mean that policy initiatives championed by liberals should be opposed long enough that conservatives can claim credit for opposing them. It is all a show, one in which conservatives are roped to the back of their own stolen car and taken for a ride down Cuckold Boulevard.

Sunday, April 03, 2016

Full speech: Donald Trump Rally in Appleton, WI (3-30-16)

Saturday, April 02, 2016

Star Tribune Minneapolis, about this year's St. Patrick's Day violence - The board member said hospital staffers told his family that there were many victims of assaults that night. Minneapolis police spokesman John Elder, however, said there were two reports of assaults and a stabbing during and after the parade. Hundreds of teens were roaming downtown that evening, but there wasn't as much violence as the previous St. Patrick's Day. Teens blocked traffic and got into fights; criminal complaints are being pursued in a handful of cases this year... The board member, however, said he wished city officials had warned the public that they could be in jeopardy. “Why wasn't the public made more aware?” he said.

"Teens" as used here means subSaharan African American People of Colour under thirty but over ten. It's a journo thing, a blatant coverup, one of many reasons people know to a certainty the news media are dishonest and resolutely so. This is not reporting, it's advocacy, meaning service to a cause, in this case—reverent pause—Diversity. We can rightly consider the words of an advocate, but not those of a dishonest one. A cause best served by deception reveals itself more persuasively than any opponent could.

All those independent minds on Twitter.

There Catholic Church is now a disgrace. The images of the toe-sucking Pope over the weekend should have been enough to empty the pews for good, assuming anyone was left after the pedophile priest scandals. Now we see that Catholic universities are going full moonbat, censuring people for expressing what is still Catholic dogma....

Marquette is allegedly a Catholic institution. The last time I checked, the Church still rejects the fruitless arrangement of gay marriage. Yet, here they are allowing Social Justice Warriors to fire a professor for upholding the Catholic position on marriage. What sort of church allows enemies of its existence take over its institutions like this? Why would anyone want to be a part of such a spineless, gutless hypocritical enterprise?

This is really not much a surprise. The Catholic Church is following the same path as the main Protestant sects. The Episcopal Church is a carnival of perversion with gay bishops and homicidal lesbians. It’s why their pews are empty. Who wants to celebrate that? The answer, of course, is no one and that’s why the Catholic Church is becoming a sad joke. Even with fair warning, they are heading down the same rat hole.

When #TheDress became a viral sensation last year, you had people who were absolutely positive the dress was gold and white while others looking at the same picture were just as sure it was black and blue. It was a stupid meme, but it dominated the news cycle and had family members screaming “Are you fucking blind?!” at each other. The same thing is happening with this Michelle Fields case. I see a woman gingerly moved out of the way, while almost everyone I know sees a woman being assaulted.

There is plenty of photographic and video evidence of the exchange, but it doesn’t seem to affect people’s perception of what happened. Once again, the more we are confronted with evidence that contradicts our beliefs, the more steadfast we are in those beliefs. The initial videos show a close-up of Fields touching Trump, and an aerial view was released by police this week that shows more details. What is irrefutable is that on March 8, after a press conference in Jupiter, Fla., Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields approached Donald Trump and was moved out of the way by Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. There is audio of Fields acting like it was a big deal to The Washington Post’s Ben Terris, but I was happy to get on with my day a few seconds after seeing the first video...

For the record, I think Michelle Fields is full of shit. I think Ben Terris placated her because she’s pretty and he’s a horny beta male. I think her bruises are self-inflicted. She didn’t look down at her arm in the video, which is the first thing you do when someone inflicts pain. I think she’s an attention whore who wants to dominate the news more than she wants to report it. She has a book coming out and all this hype is good for sales. She also has a history of histrionic complaints. I’m dubious of her supporters and suspect many are being overly chivalrous. This is a common trait among conservatives. When I suggested it’s okay to hit a woman once for every twelve times she hits you, the feminists I argued with told me I was wrong because all hits should be one for one, while the conservatives said the opposite and insisted you can never hit a woman no matter how many times she hits you. Republicans were equally irrational when Rush Limbaugh used the word “slut.” The left pretends women are big men, while the right insists they’re still little girls. I’m an egalitarian. If you want to play with the big boys and try to get a scoop by breaking the rules, you can’t act all incredulous when it doesn’t work out.

I think the real reason so many people are jumping on this case is because they already hate Trump and hope this will solidify the accusation that Trump is a violent threat to our national security. We have become a nation of wimps who are so dangerously naive, we prefer infiltration to appearing intolerant. I don’t share this sensitivity. I believe the best way to deal with violence is better, stronger, smarter violence. If someone gets in your way, move them. If they attack you, wipe them out.

TRUMP: So you're against the teachings of your Church? MATTHEWS: I have a view -- a moral view -- but I believe we live in a free country, and I don't want to live in a country so fascistic that it could stop a person from making that decision.

There is no getting around it. Oppose abortion and, according to a leading member of the media and Democrat - but I repeat myself - opposing abortion is fascistic.

Let there be no question about it: Democrats not only celebrate abortion, demand abortion on demand up to - and after - delivery of the child - but believe that Christians who are apposed are Fascists.